Alan Greenspan (born March 6, 1926) is a Jewish American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private advisor and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC. First appointed Federal Reserve chairman by President Ronald Reagan in August 1987, he was reappointed at successive four-year intervals until retiring on January 31, 2006 after the second-longest tenure in the position.

Greenspan was born in 1926 in the Washington Heights area of New York City. He was born into a Jewish family. The family of Herbert Greenspan, Alan's father, was of German descent. Alan’s mother, Rose Goldsmith was of Polish descent. He is an accomplished clarinet and saxophone player who played with Stan Getz when they were in school together. He studied clarinet at The Juilliard School from 1943 to 1944, when he dropped out to join a professional jazz band. He returned to college in 1945, attending New York University (NYU), where he received a B.S. in Economics (summa cum laude) in 1948 and an M.A. in Economics in 1950. Greenspan went on to Columbia University, intending to pursue advanced economic studies, but subsequently dropped out. At Columbia, Greenspan did study economics under the tutelage of future Fed chairman Arthur Burns, who constantly warned of the dangers of inflation. Much later, in 1977, NYU also awarded him a Ph.D. in Economics. Unfortunately, his dissertation is not available from NYU since it was removed at Greenspan's request in 1987, when he became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. However, a single copy has been found, and interestingly the 'introduction includes a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending; it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble'. On December 14, 2005, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Commercial Science degree by NYU, his fourth degree from that institution.

In the early 1950s, Greenspan began an association with famed novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand that would last until her death in 1982. He wrote for Rand’s newsletters and authored several essays in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Rand stood beside him at his 1974 swearing-in as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.